tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13609842.post679558737613293448..comments2023-10-30T09:26:32.732+00:00Comments on Now's the time: escape dodgy PoeAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06972049290586377462noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13609842.post-40290456639862845482012-11-18T17:32:55.528+00:002012-11-18T17:32:55.528+00:00Sorry, I didn't make things clear. I didn'...Sorry, I didn't make things clear. I didn't want you to attempt translations; I assumed you had some on hand done by other (foreign) poets.Roderick Robinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16828395545197001637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13609842.post-85166252454911931062012-11-18T17:03:34.128+00:002012-11-18T17:03:34.128+00:00Translating poetry deserves a book to itself. It s...Translating poetry deserves a book to itself. It seems to me that to do a poem justice in another language you have to start again. Having understood the original poem in as much as it is possible to do so, you have to write a new poem in the new language. The very nature of poetry with its ambiguity and mysterious interplay of language and Ideas to say nothing of its dependence on rhythm and euphonium makes nonsense of anything close to the literal.<br /><br />Malarmé's poem begins with the words<br /><br />Tel qu'en Lui-méme enfin l'éternité le change <br />Le Poète suscite avec un glaive nu<br />Son siècle épouvanté de n'avoir pas connu<br />Que la mort triomphait dans cette voix étrange!<br /><br />As an indication of the problem, the Penguin edition of Mallarmé offers as a literal translation:<br /><br />Such as in himself eternity changes him at last, the Poet with a naked sword raises up his century frightened not to have known that death was triumphant in that strange voice.<br /><br />According to one authority the first line of the poem is one of the most frequently quoted in Modern poetry.<br /><br />I lack both the courage and the knowledge to attempt except as an experiment conducted in private to translate lan English poem into French.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06972049290586377462noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13609842.post-73663668807153097112012-11-18T07:50:21.517+00:002012-11-18T07:50:21.517+00:00This business of translated poetry is fascinating ...This business of translated poetry is fascinating because you always know you are going to face a huge compromise. You will remember I made a vague stab at examining attempts to translate Shakespeare into French. This itself was a compromise because somewhere I'd read (or thought I had) that Goethe had had a go (into German of course) and I was keen to see what sort of fist such a giant had made of it. Half an hour's Googling showed that my hearing had been defective and that Goethe had only written essays about WS which wasn't at all what I was after.<br /><br />Perhaps in future posts you could could scatter a few lines of attempts to translate established British poets into French (with the original lines) as proof of the difficulties. And compensate for the cavalier attitude I took (without the slightest justification) towards this process in the latter pages of RoW.Roderick Robinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16828395545197001637noreply@blogger.com